London has been battered by 50mph winds that have felled trees and caused travel chaos. Powerful gusts swept across the capital as the Met Office issued a yellow "be aware" weather alert for most of the country.

Most Londoners have spent the past few weeks moaning about living through the wettest drought on record. But for Jo Behari, the deluge has been very good for business.

Behari is the entrepreneur behind Home Jane, a tradeswoman business that hit revenues of £320,000 last year. And the rain is causing a surge in the number of clients booking her female plumbers to fix leaks and overflowing gutters. “Everyone seems to have leaky houses in London, which is great for business,” she explains.

“We rely on internet advertising, so when it started pouring we changed our Google Adwords from ‘female plumber’ or ‘female electrician’ to ‘roof leaking’ and ‘damp patch appeared’. It means anyone typing that into Google is directed to our plumbers, and business has gone crazy.” Home Jane was born in 2006 when Behari had what she thought was her dream job, working in marketing for an accountancy firm. “I thought it would be amazing, taking me all over the world. But I hated the long hours for very little reward. I became disilusioned and decided to start my own business.”

A few months later, she was having electrical work done on her bathroom. “I had to phone an electrician three times before he came, and when he finally did, he made such a mess in my flat,” she says. “Then he started asking if I lived there alone, and I felt a bit uncomfortable. I started thinking about being in a vulnerable position by inviting strangers into my home to get work done. That’s how I came up with the idea for Home Jane.”

Behari is a DIY expert but didn’t have time to do her own work because of her demanding job. So she decided to quit and remortgage her home to start her own tradeswoman business. She raised £25,000, using £5000 to buy tools and set up a website, and putting aside the rest to live on until she could afford to pay herself a salary.

“I kept procrastinating about the launch date,” she says. “It was much easier to tell people ‘I’m starting a business’ than tell people ‘I run a business’ — people want to know how it’s going and what if it wasn’t going well. But my dad said to me, ‘just pick a day and that day business is open’. So that’s what I did. On 8 October 2006, my site went live and I emailed everyone I knew asking them to tell people about the business. But for three days, the phone didn’t ring. I was really worried I’d made a big mistake.”

Eventually, however, it did start ringing. A woman needed a cupboard ripped out. “I phoned five tradesman, and none were free, so I went round to do it myself. The client sat there and watched my every move, which made me really nervous. But she is still a client, so I must have a done an OK job.”

Behari took on half the jobs herself, outsourcing the rest as she wanted to be able to man the phones and offer good customer service.

“The first year was unbelievable. By December, I was drowning in paperwork and jobs, and I knew I would need help. So after four months, I moved into an office in Islington and employed an admin assistant. That wasn’t on my business plan until year three, so it took me by surprise. But I knew it was my sink or swim moment, and it was too early to let the business flounder so I just had to go for it no matter how scary it seemed at the time.”

Behari had predicted turnover would hit £30,000 in the first year, but ended up bringing in £96,000. “Which meant I had to become VAT-registered as well as becoming an employer,” she says. “It was a nice problem to have but I really wasn’t prepared for it.”

In the second year, turnover doubled to £300,000. Growth has stalled a bit due to the recession but has still grown every year. Elderly people and women felt more comfortable having a tradeswoman in their homes, but nowadays customers aren’t just female. “It’s about 60-40,” the entrepreneur explains. “We have built up a reputation for offering a high level of customer service, so people use us primarily for that and secondly because we are women.”

One potential reputational clanger was narrowly avoided. “We nearly sent a client a very rude estimate — she asked for an estimate to fit a dado rail and our spellchecker turned it into something very different,” Behari laughs, adding that she caught it before it was sent out.

While most of the early jobs involved building flat-pack furniture and hanging blinds and curtains, clients now book bigger projects such as tenancy refurbishments and bathroom refits. Behari has 60 tradeswoman on her books, but sometimes needs more.

“One problem is that certain trades don’t attract women, like gas plumbing and plastering,” she says. But that is changing and Behari, now based in Waterloo, wants Home Jane to grow faster. She’s talking to an angel about a £25,000 investment to grow beyond the South-East, and is considering a franchising programme.

But in the meantime, Behari is just hoping it keeps on raining.

Home Jane

Founded: 2006 Staff: 60 tradeswomen, four staff in officeRevenues: £320,000Business idol: Karen Darby of comparison site SimplySwitch. “She has balls of steel and when things take a turn for the worse, she just picks herself up and carries on.”